Liberal bloggers were seated around a big table in the Roosevelt Room, peppering President Obama with policy questions. Suddenly, one of them turned to Obama and … made a very personal appeal.

“You can’t be equal in this country if the very core of who you are as a person and the love — the person you love is not — if that relationship isn’t the same as everybody else’s,” said Joe Sudbay, a gay writer for Americablog who said his community was “desperate” to know more about Obama’s stance on marriage rights.

“While I’m not prepared to reverse myself here, sitting in the Roosevelt Room at 3:30 in the afternoon,” Obama said, according to a transcript Sudbay posted on his blog after the October 2010 encounter, “I think it’s fair to say that it’s something that I think a lot about. That’s probably the best you’ll do out of me today.”